Friday, July 15, 2011

An old "baseless rumor" (back in May) that no MSM mentioned (not even to refute it), although bloggers cited the passage. But as the rice grows in the rice paddies in Kanto and Tohoku and more and more cows are found radioactive because what they ate was highly radioactive (rice hay), it may be worth keeping it in mind, just in case.

As far as I've checked, the report has never been "proven", but never been "disproven" either.

From the report that appeared on Japan Business Press on May 14 (the report was from their free subscription part of the site, written by Satoshi Kawashima, the former editor of Nikkei Business and the founder of Japan Business Press):

According to the private survey by a food company, an extremely high level of radiation, order of magnitude higher than what the government has been reporting, has been detected in the soil in the rice paddy more than 50 kilometers away from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.

The food company says it is withholding the information for now because it may cause panic, but it says the survey has also found a high level of plutonium in the same rice paddy soil.

There has been no follow-up to this report. Back in May, almost all tweets on the subject in Japan were from people who outright dismissed the report as "baseless rumor" and criticized Japan Business Press for fear-mongering. "There's no way plutonium can travel outside the Fukushima plant!" was one typical tweet. (Never mind it did.) "They are manufacturing the story" was another.

17
comments:

Well it did.If I remeber corectly a change in the wether patern ocured just a few days after the reac3 exploded(mox) and blowed the shitt several km in the air. That sweep may have been fatal to Tokyo and its suroundings. Still I belive the Nother part of the main island is heavy contaminated, and its badly hitt.

I am certain that they are doing what the posibly can to prevent a full scale evac of the Nothern parts(incl tokyo), and by that also check out the nothermoust islands and Hokkaido(sapporo), probably even more contaminated becasue of the wether patern.People of Japan better start to push the goverment to messure and map Japan, why its not done yet is a dangerous neglegt and only makes thing wource.

Wasnt it for the gravness is this situation, the goverment of Japan have gone from utterly inncompetence to become a parody and a headious farce. And right now they are still serving lies and deseptions, downplaying(wtf is happening at the plant, right now) and downright criminal neglegt.

This is Bad, and its getting wource and wource.And you are defacto running out of time. Time has becomed your second biggest threat after radiation.

Fukushima I Nuke Accident: Plutonium Found Outside the Plant http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/06/fukushima-i-nuke-accident-plutonium.html

I had no idea Plutonium and Strontium were that MOBILE,"239 + 240Pu peaks were unexpectedly discovered in pre-1945 sediment core sections. Although 90Sr was found in these sections, no 137Cs was found.""Furthermore, a very small amount of 239 + 240Pu (about 1%) was found unexpectedly in pre-1945 tree rings."http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0969804395001616

That is truly not good, that Plutonium and Strontium are that mobile. It means people are dramatically less safe, and that northern Japan should be evacuated until every square inch is measured truthfully.

Yes, they have to release the map/location(s) and the soil concentrations of Pu, Cs, etc. If it's to the NW, then perhaps it is not general, but fairly localised. Evacuating the whole of N. Japan is not on, as the government have indicated by their refusal to recognize the fallout in Koriyama, Fukushima City and all up and down the main Tohoku trainline.

By the way, Chris Busby will be in Japan from tomorrow (17) till 20 July and will be giving lectures and press conferences in and near Tokyo as well as in Aizu Wakamatsu, Fukushima Pref. The schedule and so on is here:

Reactor 3: ".. fuel may have been ejected from the pool (based on information from TEPCO neutron sources up to 1 mile from the units, and very high dose rate material that had to be bulldozed over between Units 3 and 4."page 10http://cryptome.org/0003/daiichi-assess.pdf

As you point out the high mobility of Pu in the environment has been know since the beginning but it has been ignored for decades. The prevailing attitude that Pu "fixed" itself in the environment is the reason the clean up at Rocky Flats was so botched. It is a lot cheaper to fire the knowledgeable whistle-blowers and replace them with "yes" people. If you read the official version of events everything went as planned and everything is "OK" but these people beg to differ.

The AME work was preceded by the totally unexpected detection in the exceedingly wet spring of 1995 of substantial movement of plutonium in the near surface soil (vadose zone) at Rocky Flats. This surprising find was made with real-time remotely controlled monitoring instruments set up in the soil on the site by M. Iggy Litaor. An adjunct professor at the University of Colorado, Litaor had for some years worked as a senior soil scientist at Rocky Flats studying actinides in the environment. Over the years he had published more than a dozen articles reporting his findings in leading technical journals.

Litaor estimated that on May 17, 1995, the wettest day of that very wet spring, a quantity of plutonium ranging from 10 millionths of a curie to one-half of a curie was “remobilized overland” and traveled more than 100 meters down slope. This finding, he said, “challenges the framework of the suggested accelerated cleanup,” because the plutonium migration he detected “was not envisioned under any environmental condition or hydrogeochemical modeling scenarios considered for Rocky Flats.” Indeed, his finding countered the dogma heard often by the public from Rocky Flats officials, namely, that once in the environment plutonium stays in place. Litaor himself had previously supported this concept, until, as he admitted in a public forum, “Mother Nature” proved him wrong.

When Kaiser-Hill took over as cleanup contractor at Rocky Flats on July 1, 1995, barely five weeks after Litaor’s surprising finding, one of the company’s first acts was to terminate him. Asked at the October 1995 Rocky Flats Citizens Advisory Board meeting if Litaor had been dismissed, Kaiser-Hill official Christine S. Dayton said, “No.” At its next meeting the board learned that she had not told the truth. In response to public outcry over Litaor’s dismissal, Kaiser-Hill retained his services for a brief period, but by this time his research team of graduate students had been dispersed and his field instruments dismantled. Meanwhile, Ms. Dayton was named director of the Actinide Migration Evaluation, a post she would hold for the nearly ten years of the project’s existence."

"Bioturbation

In an unprecedented 1996 study, ecologist Shawn Smallwood revealed how burrowing animals redistribute contaminants left in the soil at Rocky Flats. He identified 18 species of burrowing creatures at Rocky Flats, all constantly moving soil and any adhering contaminants. They take surface material down and bring buried material up. Major diggers, like pocket gophers, harvester ants, and prairie dogs, burrow to depths of 10 to 16 feet and disturb very large areas on the surface, while coyotes, badgers, rabbits, and other animals move additional soil. Plants loosen soil and create passages animals can use. Smallwood estimated that burrowing animals disturb 11 to 12% of surface soil at Rocky Flats in any given year. Undisturbed soils do not exist at this site. The plutonium, which at Rocky Flats is only partially remediated down to a depth of 6 feet and are not remediated at all below that level, is being constantly re-circulated in the environment. What is now buried is likely some day to be brought to the surface for wider dispersal by wind, water, fires or other means."

I left my many years of life and career in Tokyo, Japan shortly after this event occurred. I left Tokyo quickly on 3.14.

I am now in North America and feel a great deal of pain for leaving the country I love so much but I felt I had no choice due to the contamination of the air, water and food. I feel even more strange coming to North American and no one knows about what his happening there and thinks life is normal. I, at times, almost every day get a feeling I should be ok to go back to live in Tokyo again and wonder if I made the right choice. But I know that in reality this would be a mistake because things are still ongoing and we will not likely know the truths for many years to come.

I feel a great pain and sorrow for not only the people of the Tohoku area but all Japan because they are being lied to by their criminal government. Japanese people, as a whole, are simple and pure people but they are being deceived by their psychotic leaders. When and how will the madness end? The people of Japan need to get to their feet and put a stop to this. They need to rise with a samurai spirit now!

But there's also Pu-241. You never heard of that? Look at this NSC paper (japanese only):http://www.nsc.go.jp/anzen/shidai/genan2011/genan040/siryo1.pdf

There is a table (表 5) showing ""Estimated amount of radioactive material released into the atmosphere":18 Petabecquerels of Caesium-13415 Petabecquerels of Caesium-137...19 Gigabecquerels of Plutonium-2386,4 Gigabecquerels of Plutonium-239/2401,2 Terabecquerels of Plutonium-241!...So the expected amount of released Pu-241 was much higher than the amount of all other Plutonium isotopes, yet it has never been measured?But there's also good news. Half life of Pu-241 is only 14.4 years.

@areva: so you think it'll happen now? This is like war, the population is sacrificed for the goals of a few and people see no other way but to hold tight and go through it. From imperialism to capitalism? Don't expect a revolution anytime soon.

".. estimated that burrowing animals disturb 11 to 12% of surface soil at Rocky Flats in any given year."

"So the expected amount of released Pu-241 was much higher than the amount of all other Plutonium isotopes, yet it has never been measured?But there's also good news. Half life of Pu-241 is only 14.4 years."

Ten half-lives to be 'safe', especially with an alpha-emitter, gives us 140 years of threat, from that isotope.

The shorter the half-life the more "radioactive" the material is. In addition Pu 241 decays into americium-241 which is also a dangerous internal alpha/gamma emitter with a 432.7 year half-life. This in turn decays into neptunium-237 and then protactinium-233. Few unstable isotopes become stable in one decay and daughter products can as dangerous if not more so.

For those hoping for/expecting a popular uprising in Japan - you are more delusional than the marketing efforts of TEPCO and Government combined. As Jesper Koll recently put it:

1) Never-ever underestimate the ability and willingness of the Japanese people to suffer together.2) Never-ever underestimate the ability and willingness of the ruling elite to make sure rule number one is applied.

".. the 2006 Santa Fe Water Quality Report stated a “qualified detection of plutonium-238” was detected in Santa Fe drinking water supplies (4). The US DOE has also reported the detection of LANL radionuclides in Santa Fe drinking water since the late 1990s (5). .. approximately 423,776 cubic feet (12,000 cubic meters) of plutonium contaminated waste is buried in unlined disposal pits, trenches, and shafts at the LANL site. This early detection of plutonium in Santa Fe drinking water may be an indicator of an approaching plutonium contamination plume in Santa Fe groundwater."

NHK, July 15, 2011"Tokyo Electric Power Company has injected more than 200 cubic meters of nitrogen into the [No. 3] reactor’s containment vessel since Thursday evening. But it says the interior air pressure has increased very little."http://enenews.com/reactor-3-containment-vessel-holding-air-pressure-gas-be-leaking-damaged-part-container-tepco-video

Based on the NRC's assumption that the corium was encased in salt from boiling off of ocean water, freshwater should put the salt back into solution. NRC said saltwater is more likely to form hydrogen, just speculating that is why they are injecting nitrogen again, they are probably analyzing the steam boiled off.

http://cryptome.org/0003/daiichi-assess.pdf

New York Times, July 16, 2011:Japan’s second-largest nuclear operator [Kansai Electric Power] said Saturday that it was manually shutting down a reactor in central Japan after a technical malfunction. .. loss of pressure had been detected late Friday in an accumulator tank needed to cool the reactor core in an emergency, .."

About my coverage of Japan Earthquake of March 11

I am Japanese, and I not only read Japanese news sources for information on earthquake and the Fukushima Nuke Plant but also watch press conferences via the Internet when I can and summarize my findings, adding my observations.

About This Site

Well, this was, until March 11, 2011. Now it is taken over by the events in Japan, first earthquake and tsunami but quickly by the nuke reactor accident. It continues to be a one-person (me) blog, and I haven't even managed to update the sidebars after 5 months... Thanks for coming, spread the word.------------------This is an aggregator site of blogs coming out of SKF (double-short financials ETF) message board at Yahoo.

Along with commentary on day's financial news, it also provides links to the sites with financial and economic news, market data, stock technical analysis, and other relevant information that could potentially affect the financial markets and beyond.

Disclaimer: None of the posts or links is meant to be a recommendation, advice or endorsement of any kind. The site is for information and entertainment purposes only.